Battle On
by SeaBreeze
Summary: KOTOR II. A series of unrelated one-shots centering around battle and the Exile's uncertain relationship with her pilot.
1. Bloodlust

Battle On

By Seabreeze

Bloodlust

A/N: As the story description states, this is the first of a collection of one-shots dealing both with the fact that the Exile is a Jedi Warrior (I know that's not the correct term, deal with it) and also the fact that there are some… "feelings" between her and Atton Rand. All of these will take place after the end of KOTOR II.

Disclaimer: LucasArts, Obsidian, etc., own characters and situation and all that. Is writing disclaimers a rule written somewhere? I'd assume by being a member of a site for FAN. FICTION, it would imply that I understand I did not create these characters… oh, disclaimers, the bane of my fanfiction-writing existence.

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A Jedi was not a Warrior. A Jedi was a keeper of peace, a beacon of light in a world tainted by dark. A Jedi drew her light saber of necessity, when the only way to reinforce the light in the world was to strike the dark. A Jedi did not use her light saber out of anger, vengeance, fury, or fear, but only as a last resort to protect the light.

At least, that was how it should be.

But revenge and fury were difficult to ignore when a particular exiled Jedi found herself upon a ring of slavery on Taris – sexual slavery of women and children. She had stormed through the seedy, otherwise abandoned apartment complex, blasting open doors for skinny, dirty, frightened people and declaring their permanent freedom. She had not bothered with the guards – her pilot and head mechanic had grimly taken them out – for they, as base as they were, were not the source of her trembling fury.

Her blood boiled as she watched the final group of young women and children scatter away from her, and she had tonelessly asked the Zabrak to see what he could do for those he found outside the complex. He had nodded and turned away to do her bidding without comment, grimly wondering if the Ebon Hawk's pilot could rein her in. If anyone could, it was him, but even so, he had never seen his General so blank, so frozen-white-hot.

It was not difficult to find the headquarters of the operation.

Two connected rooms full of "business men" and their henchmen, all unprepared for a furious, deadly Jedi and her scowling, blaster-wielding pilot to serve them their doom.

She did not act purely out of revenge.

There was a light side and a dark side; the Jedi and the Sith. But even the Sith could be motivated by good, even Sith could work to change the world for the better. Her pilot was proof of that.

And then there were people like these slavers, taking advantage of the innocent, the poor, the helpless, the afraid, in the worst possible way, to make a few extra credits. There was no light in them, for no good in their hearts, no matter how small, would allow them to ruin the lives of innocents for their own profit.

Sith could see the errors of their ways; could turn around and walk willingly back to the light. Those, however, who were motivated purely by their own personal greater good, would never turn back to the light, for they saw that the light was selfless and loving, and they simply could never be that way.

It was not revenge at all, truly, but execution.

She became a blur of robes and flashing light saber blade, taking down several thugs in a matter of seconds. Each swing, each slice, each kick, stab, parry, felt delicious in her muscles. Her blood sang at the tension she felt in the hilt of her light saber each time its blade met resistance in the bodies of the slavers. She moved so quickly she felt she had utterly lost control, and yet with each swing, another fell to the floor loudly.

It took her a while – or perhaps she was moving so quickly it only seemed a while – to realize that the sounds of her pilot's blaster had joined the symphony of death in the rooms. They battled back to back, as always, a multi-faced killing machine. They were unstoppable – she was unstoppable. She was ruthless, merciless, and deadly fast. There was no time for excuses and reasoning because there was no excuse, no reason, she would ever accept. She leapt through the air and dealt each victim several blows – suffering was not necessary, only immediate death.

"We've still got thirteen left, and I'm running out of ammo," her she heard her pilot's voice drift over her left shoulder, and became irritated with the softness of it.

"Leave them to me, then." She snarled through her teeth, and flew immediately back into action, twice as fast as before. She was an efficient machine: leap, stab, roll, slice, stab, leap, swing, duck, pierce, swing. Five down. She could take a million more. She battled on, taking out six more, and Atton caught one trying to ambush her from behind. The last piece of scum slavery stood huddled in a corner, and she approached him like the calmest, deadliest of predators.

"Please, you don't understand!" the beast of a man sputtered, sobbing at his imminent death.

Her eyes did not flicker once as she put the blade of her light saber clean through his chest, and his last cry gurgled sickeningly in his throat.

She crouched beside his useless body, panting as her head swam. The rush, the thrill! And she had gotten not nearly enough, she could take on anyone, an army of Sith Lords… her veins seemed electrified, charged to kill and kill and stop for nothing or no one, not even injury or her own death… the intoxication was overpowering –

"Uh, Exile?" Her pilot's voice interrupted the flow of pure emotion raging her body. She felt she might explode; the nervous voice infuriated her when there was so much power inside of her – there was no room for doubt or fear, not with this explosive magic racing her veins. She heard him step up behind her and felt an urge to attack him; not to hurt him, of course, but she knew he would put up a fight that might come close to satisfying her.

"What?" she snapped.

"You're acting… strange. Is everything alright?"

It was as if everything clicked cleanly into place. She stood and turned, abruptly, grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him to her, crushing his lips down upon hers. He made a muffled noise against her hard lips and fell rigid with shock, but she did not notice or care.

It was even better than fighting, this particular thrill. The electricity flooding her veins was replaced with heat so hot her lips, fingers, very soul burned. He had been off-limits, even in her own mind, from the start, and now she waged war on the barriers that kept her away from him and reveled in the fact that doing so felt as good as she'd always imagined.

The attack she made on his mouth, so one-sided at first, began to turn tides as he stood his ground, crushing her body to his with his arms. The battle front was pushed and pulled back and forth in the space between their lips, and neither was afraid to use every weapon they had to gain the upper hand – tongues crashed like waves, teeth sunk roughly into lips and pulled just enough for pain to register before it would be soothed away by a brush of tongue or soft, cracked, pink flesh. The heat was excruciatingly pleasant and wonderfully overwhelming.

They broke apart suddenly, gasping for breath. Her pilot stared at her in amazement, dazed and unable to keep the lust and emotion out of his eyes. She stared at him, her eyes returning nothing, before kissing him fiercely one last time.

"Let's go find Bao-Dur."

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A/N: please read and review. Next chapter: Warrior's Regret.


	2. Warrior's Regret

"What makes you think you've got the right to interrogate me on anything

Battle On

By Seabreeze

Warrior's Regret

A/N: God I am addicted to writing Atton/Exile fics. Sooo addicted. I'm compensating for all the times all you could say to him was that you wanted to play pazaak. Psh.

Disclaimer: see chapter one

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_"What makes you think you've got the right to interrogate me on anything? You've got plenty of lives to answer for—all you Jedi do. How did you even live with yourself after Malachor? Is that why you went back to the Jedi Council? Hoping they'd kill you? Wasn't it? Maybe you thought they'd forgive you—sure, you might have thought they'd execute you. But Jedi don't kill, do they? At least not their prisoners. Maybe you were counting on it when you went back in chains. So you got off easy—you were exiled, brushed under the cargo ramp, another dirty little Jedi secret. I'll tell you—all those Jedi at Malachor? They deserved it. Every last one of them." _

The Exile brushed her sleeve against her forehead, pushing sweat and stray strands of hair out of her face. She retracted her light saber and took a deep breath, weary to the core. They had been ambushed suddenly, right when the group was most exhausted and ready to head back to the Ebon Hawk from the Nar Shadaa docks.

She stood, arms hanging limply at her sides, amongst the bodies of the fallen, and simply stared. In her peripheral vision she could see Atton and Mical picking over the corpses for medpacs, grenades, credits, whatever they could find that would aid them in their journey. A distant part of her told her she should join them, that the sooner they got everything they could, the sooner they could get off the smuggler's moon. She heard a rumbling in her ears and felt her center of balance revolve dramatically and pressed her fingers fiercely into the hilt of her light saber to stabilize herself.

They had not needed to die. Attacking three armed Jedi was stupid and irresponsible. Whoever had sent them had knowingly sent them to their deaths. That thought alone both infuriated her and made her want to lie down to sleep for a long time. That lives were so disposable… there had been no reason. The attack had, if anything, delayed their departure a few minutes. She was so incensed she could barely stand it; she was torn between screaming in rage and mortification, falling to her knees and sobbing, and stabbing her own light saber through her heart in desperation. It was dramatic, but it was so senseless, such a waste… most of those men were younger than her, probably had not even left their mothers' homes… she swayed on her feet.

Atton stopped, seeing his leader make an unusually uncoordinated movement. He watched her, standing and staring at the men at her feet, a bewildered look on her face as her body weaved subtly back and forth. His concern grew and he approached her, seeing upon closer inspection that her eyes were wide with dark circles beneath them, and she stared with eyes that didn't see.

"Exile?" he asked. She took too long to lift her head to meet his gaze. When their eyes finally met, the look she gave him was far too significant for him to even comprehend, and, too soon, her eyes rolled back in her head and he saw her begin to fall, as if in slow motion.

She felt her weight catch before she hit the ground, and then she was gone.

- - - - - - - -

The Disciple, of course, had been overly concerned and had only made things more difficult as Atton tried to carry their leader back to the Ebon Hawk, hovering over her like an overgrown bat. Ignoring his fellow student, Atton carried her to the medical bay and sent Mical to assure everyone that the Exile was fine; that she had just overexerted herself as she was prone to, and, with a little bit of quiet rest in the medical bay, she would be back to normal in no time.

He had no doubts this was true.

What worried him… he had seen her suffer before, seen her exhausted, beaten nearly unconscious, seen her writhing in pain. He had never seen her faint, though, and most worrisome of all was that she had just been standing there. Staring. When she had looked at him, her eyes had tried to tell him so many things at once that he was not remotely sure what she was trying to communicate. He brushed her hair off her forehead, feeling skin that was too cool. She was deathly pale, her eyelids like purple bruises in her pale pallet of a face. Realizing fawning over her would do nothing, he pulled the brown blanket up to her shoulders, administered what medpacs he could, and left her to rest as he went to take the ship out.

- - - - - - - -

When he returned a few hours later, he found the Exile fast asleep with the Disciple at her side.

"How's she doing?" he asked begrudgingly, annoyed that his rival had been able to look after her in his absence.

"Better, I think," Mical replied. "She's got more color in her cheeks and she seems to have relaxed a little."

Atton made a noncommittal grunt, seeing that she did, in fact, look a little healthier, and worried jealously if the Disciple's dedicated vigil had anything to do with it.

"You were right there right before she fell," Mical said suddenly. "Any idea what caused it? I can imagine little in this world that could cause the Exile to faint."

"No idea," Atton replied without much thought.

"Hmm. It was lucky you were there to catch her," Mical continued. "I keep asking myself why I wasn't paying closer attention."

"I just happened to see her sway at the right time," Atton said shortly, sorely wishing the polite man beside him would leave him alone with her. "it was luck."

"Yes. Well, I suppose my shift is over." He said, standing as Atton inwardly cheered. "When we near Onderon I will alert you."

"Thanks," Atton said, watching the Disciple out of the corner of his eye until he was alone in the medical bay again. He sighed and turned his attention back to the Exile. She did indeed look better; her pale cheeks looked slightly pink; she had turned to her side and her face looked significantly less strained. He sat back in his seat, arms crossed against his chest, and frowned. The Exile let out a deep breath, her chest rising and falling slowly. Her lips, parted just enough for air to pass in and out, were naturally pink and full – perfect, now that he considered it. She was not stereotypically beautiful at all – some might argue she was "just alright", but for him, there was no female anywhere in the galaxy who could equal her.

"Murderer," she exhaled, her eyebrows pulling together into a tight V over sleeping eyelids. Atton felt his own eyebrows raise in reaction – was that what this was all about? His dark past? He thought she had forgiven him ages ago! She had said so herself, to his face! How could she pretend - ?

"Deserve every bit…" she murmured, clutching her pillow with tense, rigid fingers. "Murderer," she sighed again, "Exiled… for a reason…"

He sat, his mouth open in surprise, for a whole minute. She wasn't angry at him – she was angry at herself. He had never seen even the slightest hint that this was the case – she was always so sure of herself, of her decision, past and present. He knew – thought, anyway – that she knew all her actions were done unselfishly, for the greater good… sure, she had killed, but who in the universe hadn't, with the dust of the Mandalorian and Jedi Wars still settling?

Her breathing became labored suddenly, and a soft moan sounded from behind closed lips. He pushed himself forwards and set large hands on her muscled shoulders, shaking her gently.

"Taset. Hey, Taset, wake up."

She started suddenly at his touch, eyes wild as they met his.

"Atton!" she gasped, panting. She lowered her eyes to her lap, staring blankly down as she shoved stray whisps of hair away from her face.

"How're you feeling?" Atton asked after a long moment of watching the severity of the rise and fall of her chest lessen.

"Alright," she said, eyes unfocused again, despite the tiny beadings of sweat coating her forehead.

"You were talking, you know. In your sleep."

"Was I?" it wasn't really a question, and she didn't sound overly concerned. Atton frowned and leaned back in his seat, arms folded across his chest.

"Uh-huh." He said, watching her wryly. Ignoring him, Taset moaned again and flipped over to her stomach before sighing into the pillow. Atton cleared his throat. "Hey, what happened out there? I never thought I'd see the day when you fainted."

"You caught me," she murmured into her pillow, again, not asking a question.

"Yeah, I did. You dropped like a sack of rocks. But what happened out there?"

"Just got a little light-headed."

Atton snorted. "Give me more credit than that, sweetheart, I've been with you since Peragus."

"Forgive me, Atton. I don't really want to discuss this anymore. I'm sure you got the gist of it, anyway."

"Maybe I did." Atton murmured. Taset sighed and seemed to melt into the bed, turning her head to face away from him. Atton watched her back rise and fall gently with her breathing. "Can I ask you one thing, though?" he said after a moment.

"Go ahead."

"Those – those things you were saying. The things you felt. It didn't have anything to do with me, did it?"

She flipped her head back to look at her pilot, a small smile on her lips.

"Not really, no."

"Because… I said some pretty harsh things after Nar Shadaa."

"You didn't mean them." She spoke as if she had seen his heart, and he swallowed a heavy lump in his throat.

"I said those things because I knew they would hurt. And I – I want you to know – I lied."

Taset chuckled, rubbing her face into the pillow. "Surprise surprise."

"So… no hard feelings between us?"

"No, Atton. No hard feelings."

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A/N: please review!!


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